Miracles in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  “Suicide?” he said, curling his lip in surprise. “Why would she go and do a fool thing like that?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Was she upset these last few days, acting strange, refusing to talk to you—anything like that?”

  “She’s been acting strange for ten years. But as for these last few days—yeah, she was all the time creeping around the house at night, mumbling to herself, forgetting she had clothes on the line, burning food in the oven, things like that.”

  “Do you have any idea what was bothering her?”

  “That preacher up on the hill,” he said without hesitation. “The day he arrived was when she took a turn for the worse. A couple of times I caught her out on the porch, wearing nothing but her bathrobe, staring up that way and saying his name over and over like she was praying. It liked to drive me up the wall, her carrying on that way. I told her I wasn’t gonna put up with it anymore, but it didn’t do any good. You’d have thought he was the goddamn Messiah come to Maggody!”

  It did not seem the moment to mention who’d discovered her body. The emotion that had been missing when I’d told him the news was now evident; I decided to find out if it went any deeper than Boone Creek in July. “You and Norma Kay went to the revival last night, didn’t you?”

  “It was all her doing. I ain’t one for sitting on a bench all night while folks gabble about being saved. Reminded me of the fans at the ball games, all squealing like hogs at a scalding.”

  “Did you happen to notice if Norma Kay spoke to one of the ushers?” I asked delicately.

  “Spoke to several of ’em on account of them being on her team. I don’t know any of their names, though.” He stood up and gestured at the door. “You’d better go so I can start calling her family up in Kansas about the funeral.”

  “I’ll let you know when the body can be released,” I said as I obediently rose. I was halfway to the door when it occurred to me I was no longer a high school student without a hall pass. “I have a couple of more questions before I go, Mr. Grapper. We’re trying to get a clearer picture of what happened last night. What time did you and your wife leave the revival?”

  “About ten o’clock or so.”

  “And you both came straight home?”

  He nodded impatiently. “I settled down to watch the news, but Norma Kay was flitting around the house like a damnfool moth. After a spell, she said she was going over to the gym to do some work.”

  “What time was that?” I asked, wishing I’d brought the stubby pencil and scrap of paper.

  “Maybe eleven. I watched a movie for a while, then went on to bed about half an hour later, assuming she was capable of locking up when she got back.”

  “You weren’t worried about her being there by herself so late at night?”

  “I didn’t like it, but she swore she always kept the gym door locked while she was in her office. She wouldn’t have unlocked the door unless she was expecting someone.” He gave me such a pugnacious look that I expected him to drop into a boxer’s stance and cock his fists at me, but instead he shrugged. “But she wasn’t, of course. Anybody who says otherwise is a damn liar. Norma Kaye knew better than to cheat on me.”

  I suppose I should have asked to search the house for a suicide note, but it didn’t seem likely that she’d have come back to the house to leave one on the kitchen table or taped to the refrigerator. Her office seemed a more feasible location, although the crime squad had searched it carefully and come up empty-handed.

  “I’ll be back later,” I told Bur seconds before he slammed the door in my face. I climbed in my car just as the sun flashed over the treetops. I yawned so hard I came close to dislocating my jaw and drove back to the high school.

  Harve was standing in the parking lot, looking as gray and tired as I’m sure I did. I pulled up beside him and said, “Her husband didn’t burst into tears, but he was never in danger of winning any awards for sensitivity. For all I know, he may have been puking out his guts by the time I reached the county road.”

  “You know him?” asked Harve as he fished a cigar stub and a book of matches out of his shirt pocket.

  “He was the head coach when I was in high school, and a real bastard. He screamed obscenities at his players, bawled out their parents if they interfered, insulted the school board, and went out of his way to be rude to the students. He was not your basic beloved father figure.”

  Harve struck several matches until he got the stub smoldering to his satisfaction (and my dismay). “If he was so gawdawfui, why didn’t they fire him?”

  “His teams always made it to at least the quarter finals of the state tournament and won more often than not. I wasn’t around when he finally retired, but Ruby Bee wrote me a letter about how he socked a referee or something along those lines. I gathered his retirement wasn’t altogether voluntary.”

  “What about his wife? Was she sleeping around?”

  “I don’t know, Harve,” I said as I fought back another yawn. “I’ll see what I can find out. As Malachi Hope implied, it shouldn’t be all that challenging to find out if she was having an affair. There’s not a nook or cranny through which the grapevine fails to curl.” The yawn came despite my efforts. Once I’d recovered, I said, “McBeen say anything else before he left?”

  Harve ground out the cigar stub. “He said there was a bruise on her cheek that she’d tried to cover with makeup. There wasn’t any makeup in her purse or in a desk drawer, so we can assume it happened earlier.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “McBeen will let us know when he sees fit. In the meantime, keep nosing around and see what you can dig up about this so-called affair. I let the Hope fellow go home a few minutes ago. Give him a little time to get hisself cleaned up, then drop by to run through his story several more times. Also, see if anyone can confirm his coming, leaving, and then coming back. Something about it smells fishier than a johnboat.”

  Rather than launch into an argument about who was better equipped to head the investigation (I have one gun, three bullets, and a radio that works only during lunar eclipses), I drove home to shower, brush my teeth, and tap into the grapevine over biscuits and grits.

  “Dahlia, my love bunny,” gasped Kevin as he read over the shopping list she’d thrust at him. “Cookies? Orange soda pop? Three pounds of pork chops? Ten pounds of potatoes? This ain’t on your diet. You know what the doctor told you.”

  “I don’t have diabetes anymore,” she countered with a blissful smile. “You heard what Malachi Hope said last night, dint you? I’m cured, so there’s no reason to keep nibbling carrots when I can eat real food. Why don’t you sneak away later this morning and bring home the groceries? I was thinking I’d make a chocolate cake with fudge icing while I listen to my soaps. We kin have some after supper.”

  Kevin winced as she continued to gaze at him like a cow in a field of lush clover. “I heard what Malachi Hope said,” he began timidly, “but you still got to ask the doctor before you commence to eating pork chops and chocolate cake.”

  “Malachi Hope put his hands on my shoulders and prayed to Jesus to make my diabetes go away; then he told me loud and clear that I was cured.” She lumbered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “You believe in Jesus, doncha?” she continued. “He’s not going to lie. As soon as Malachi said I was cured, the diabetes disappeared just like drops of water in a hot skillet. I could feel the tingle, and that’s good enough for me. Why doncha get some bacon, too? I think I’ll fry up some for lunch.”

  He crumpled onto the couch and tried not to groan as he looked down the list that covered one whole page. There wasn’t so much as a leaf of lettuce or a single radish anywhere on it.

  Kevin believed in Jesus, having been baptized in Boone Creek on his fourteenth birthday, but he had some doubts about Malachi Hope.

  Eula Lemoy lifted her feet to inspect her ankle. It was definitely less swollen, she decided as she took a sip of tea and a nibble of toast. Here she’d been spen
ding forty dollars every month for two years on pink pills to keep her blood thin, not to mention the ordeal of blood tests and having to sit in the waiting room half the day just so the mealymouthed doctor could tell her to keep taking the pills.

  Now that she was cured, she could put that money to better use. She put down the teacup and picked up a mail-order catalog. It must have been divine intervention that the first thing she looked at was a real pretty comforter that cost exactly forty dollars.

  “Where is your walker?” Mrs. Twayblade asked Petrol Buchanon, who was shuffling down the hall. “We don’t want to have another nasty fall, do we? Medicaid isn’t going to keep paying for hip operations forever. We have to take precautions.”

  “Don’t reckon I need it,” he said, cackling. “This time next week I’ll be kicking up my heels with Miz Teasel down in room twenty-two.”

  Mrs. Twayblade was not amused. “I want you to wait right here while I fetch your walker—and I don’t want to hear any more of this gibberish. This preacher may have told you that you could walk like you used to, but that’s no excuse to risk a broken hip. Do you know what’s involved with the necessary Medicaid and Medicare forms? I am already drowning in paperwork.”

  “When Jesus eased my arthritis, I felt it from my toes to the tip of my nose. Iff’n I ain’t crippled no more, I ain’t gonna use the walker.”

  “I hope that when the time comes, Jesus is going to fill out the Medicaid forms,” she said with a sniff.

  As she went past him, he pinched her buttocks. The subsequent dialogue was so spirited that heads popped out of doorways all the way to the end of the hall.

  Lottie Estes squinted at the recipe in the newspaper, but the tiny print was too blurry for her to make out. Last night when Malachi had squeezed her shoulders and prayed that her vision be restored, she’d felt an odd sensation all over her body. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have pulled off her glasses and given them to Seraphina, who was standing right there in a sparkly white dress, smiling and telling her how it was a blessing direct from Jesus. The way everybody in the audience cheered and hollered when she read the Twenty-third Psalm made her feel like when she’d won a blue ribbon for her strawberry preserves.

  She finally put down the newspaper and tried to see what time it was, but the numbers on her watch were no larger than the print. It had to be going on eight, she told herself as she made sure she had a clean hankie in her purse, picked up her lesson plan book, and went out to her car. As she backed the car out of the driveway, she wondered if asking Seraphina Hope to give back her glasses would constitute blasphemy. Jesus had cured her, after all. Implying that he hadn’t was likely to be a sin of some sort or other.

  “What’s this I heard about you waltzing out of the store yesterday afternoon with a Mr. Coffee?” Jim Bob asked as he stuffed a forkful of pancakes into his mouth.

  “I don’t care to discuss it,” Mrs. Jim Bob said from in front of the sink, where she was scrubbing the skillet.

  “I gave you a Mr. Coffee for your birthday last year, and it’s been gurgling just fine ever since. Why’d you want a new one?”

  “You heard me the first time.” She left the skillet to soak and busied herself fixing a cup of tea. “Wipe that dribble of syrup off your chin. Sometimes I wonder if you were under the porch when the good Lord was passing out the manners.”

  On that note, she sailed into the sunroom, leaving him to speculate on why she was so hoppin’ mad when he hadn’t done a blessed thing except eat his breakfast. The previous night he’d come home as soon as the SuperSaver closed, and he’d kept the television real low so’s not to disturb her. He’d even remembered to put the beer cans in the garbage can out by the garage instead of in the wastebasket under the sink, where she claimed they made the kitchen reek.

  “Did you go to the revival last night?” he called, feigning interest in an effort to mollify her.

  “I did not.”

  He put his plate next to the sink, made sure his chin was no longer glistening, and went to the doorway. “I’m surprised you didn’t. I thought you and Brother Verber would go together.”

  She looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Damned if he knew. “Well, I just thought … you being so devout and all, that you’d want to be sitting in the first pew with your Bible in your lap.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  His jaw waggled like a mule’s tail as he tried to come up with an answer. “You haven’t missed a Sunday night service since I met you. Why, even when we were on our honeymoon over at Eureka Springs, you—”

  “I said I don’t care to discuss it!”

  The conversation was getting murkier than the stock pond behind Raz Buchanon’s shack—and somehow or other, the Mr. Coffee was at the bottom of it (the murkiness, not the stock pond). Scratching his head, he went back into the kitchen and wasted a few minutes stealthily opening cabinets to see if he could find the Mr. Coffee. When he was satisfied it wasn’t there, he took a quick peek at his wife (she hadn’t moved a muscle, as far as he could tell), took his truck key from the bowl on the counter, and let himself out the front door.

  Maybe it was his fault he came within inches of smashing into Lottie Estes’s ancient Edsel up at the intersection. He assured her he’d been distracted, and he went so far as to offer her his handkerchief when she started blubbering apologies. Only afterward did he realize it had been a miracle neither of them had been killed.

  8

  “It’s about time you showed up,” Ruby Bee said as I came across the barroom, my hair still damp from the shower and my eyeballs aching as if they’d been skinned. “I suppose you’ll be wantin’ breakfast, even though it’s as plain as the nose on your face you’ve got more important things to do.”

  Avoiding eye contact (a technique espoused at the police academy for dealing with the deranged), I went to the end of the bar to fill a mug with coffee, then sat down. “I can’t think of anything more important than warding off starvation with the best cooking west of the Mississippi.”

  “How about solving a murder, Miss National Geographic? Or is police work just a hobby?”

  I choked on a mouthful of coffee. Once I’d wiped my face and caught my breath, I opted for full frontal eye contact. “What murder do you have in mind?”

  “Norma Kay Grapper’s, of course. I never cared for Bur—and still don’t—but she was always manner-some when I saw her at the SuperSaver. The girls on the basketball team are going to be mighty upset when they hear the news. Maybe you should talk to them after you finish getting a statement from Malachi Hope. Do you want I should call Darla Jean McIlhaney and have her set up a meeting?”

  “She’s not home,” said Estelle as she came up behind me. “I saw her and Heather Reilly driving toward Farberville not five minutes ago. They were in a big hurry, but most likely on account of having to be back at eleven for practice.” She gave Ruby Bee the same worldly half smile that Gloria Swanson had given William Holden just the night before in Sunset Boulevard. “Imagine the girls with their little gym bags, gathered in the parking lot, waiting for Norma Kay to unlock the door for them.”

  Ruby Bee wiped her cheeks on the hem of her apron. “I was just telling Arly that she should be the one to break the news to the team.”

  “Hold your horses,” I said before they sank into such maudlin sentimentality that it would take a dredger to pull them to the surface. “How do you two know about Norma Kay’s death last night?”

  “Ruby Bee called me,” Estelle said hastily. “That’s how I know.”

  I glared at the accused, who had the grace to pretend to be abashed. As she noticed how tightly I was gripping the mug, she prudently moved out of range and said, “When I opened up this morning, the telephone was ringing. It proved to be LaBelle over at the sheriff’s office. She was trying to find you on account of the sheriff wanting to tell you something real important. LaBelle said she’d called your office and your apartment, but you hadn’t answe
red. All she could think to do was leave a message with me for you to call Harvey Dorfer when you turned up.”

  “And she told you all the details?”

  “She may have felt the need to explain why it was so urgent you call back. I was so distressed over the news that I had to talk to someone …”

  Someone nodded but kept her mouth shut.

  My face was hotter than the coffee in the mug. I gave myself a moment to cool off and then said, “LaBelle had no business telling you what happened last night. And you have no business embellishing it and then spreading it all over town.”

  “Embellishing it? I beg your pardon, missy—I didn’t say one syllable that’s not the gospel truth.”

  “You said it was murder,” I countered sternly, “and we don’t have the results of the autopsy yet. It very well may turn out to be suicide.”

  Ruby Bee gave Estelle a look that presumably was fraught with significance, then said, “Norma Kay would rather die than commit suicide. She used to be a Catholic before she married Bur Grapper and moved here.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  Estelle must have decided that it was safe to butt back in. “I was the one who found that out. It happens that Edwina Spitz’s niece married a boy from Topeka. I disremember her name, but she used to visit Edwina in the summer with a whole suitcase full of Barbie dolls and accessories. One morning Edwina tripped over a little pink convertible and came within inches of falling off her back porch into the azaleas.”

  “Could we stick to the story?” I said.

  “Her name was Justine,” Ruby Bee said, then caught my glare and retreated to the far end of the bar.

  “That’s it,” said Estelle. “Justine married a real nice boy whose daddy owned a clothing store on the main street in Topeka. They had twins right off the bat, but then Justine started dwindling away till she was nothing but skin and bones. She upped and died before the twins reached kindergarten.”